In the fourth quarter, Dow Jones said they now have 811,000 paid subscibers to The Wall Street Journal Web site, an increase of 5.6 percent over last year, said Online Media Daily.
Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine added that "Dow Jones is one of the few publishers with an aggressive, proactive attitude that incorporates a variety of online strategies. Dow Jones has a number of levers it can pull, and it is seemingly doing just that,"
Another analyst for Credit Suisse, Debra Schwartz, commented that "The company is moving aggressively away from print and reiterated its target of print revenue exposure of under 60% in 2007."
What's important to me here, is the way both of the analysts described the companies' aggressive attitude and strategy to move away from their exposure to print revenue, contrary to the LA Times non-strategy that has severely impacted their business and revenue.
I remember when The Wall Street Journal first started their subscription model on the web and a large portion of their detractors said that nobody would pay for it when they could get information free all over the Internet. They were wrong! The Wall Street Journal kept on working on what they believed in and are one of the leading traditional media companies that are successfully navigating the new realities facing them.
Disney did this also when they started to aggressively pursue various Internet strategies rather than mull around with their hands in their pockets trying to save the old model.
What I like about The Wall Street Journal strategy is the subscription model. Those of us that serve specific markets shouldn't throw away the possibility of something like that working. The Wall Street Journal has proved that it can and does. We need to consider it as something that we may need to pursue. Even though we hear a lot about closed systems not working online anymore, there are still many online marketers that are successfully making fortunes doing just that.
Comment Preview